


Alastair "tell Cordelia I have a headache" Carstairs

by Rory_writes



Category: The Last Hours, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alastair is sad, Character Study, M/M, he's had a hard life, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:55:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25661722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rory_writes/pseuds/Rory_writes
Summary: Alastair has fled his sister's engagement party and is feeling heartbroken and devastated in the carriage, but does he have anyone to blame other than himself?
Relationships: Thomstairs
Comments: 4
Kudos: 71
Collections: Pls kill me





	Alastair "tell Cordelia I have a headache" Carstairs

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of feelings about Alastair Carstairs, and in a lot of ways I relate to his character. He means a lot to me, the oldest child keeping secrets to protect their family, becoming callous in the process. I wanted to write a scene that showed he isn't a shallow monster, that he has a heart and that he deserved better.  
> I hope you like it!

Alastair wrenched the door of the carriage open and hurled himself up into it, collapsing against the bench seat with the door slamming shut behind him. The carriage rocked for a moment, as if it was upset by Alastair’s onslaught. He felt his body sag against the familiar cushions, but his chest was aching so painfully he forced his shoulders back as if he could maybe ease some of the pressure on his lungs. He was used to the pain, the pressure build up that swelled inside him, it had been growing steadily since he was nine or ten and just like a frog getting used to water as it slowly boiled to death… he was used to the ever building ache behind his ribs.  
Tonight though, it felt as if it had built up to a point of near exploding. It was over with Charles, the boy he had loved since they were at the Academy together. His first love. He had honestly thought that Charles would be his last. Yet he had dared, for a moment, to hope for something else. He had hoped for the boy who looked at art and made notes on what the paintings made him think and feel, so that he could share those with others. This same boy who returned to a gallery he had already seen, because it was what Alastair had wanted to see. The boy who believed in himself because he believed in his friends. The boy who went from gawky and clearly not knowing what to do with the sheer length of his own limbs, to shouldering doors wide open with his eyes steely and on a mission.  
Alastair had been walking over to where Thomas had stood with young Lucie and that blasted Matthew Fairchild with a small, precious bubble of hope in his hands. He had wanted to talk to them, to Thomas, and he had wanted to be kind. He had wanted Thomas to smile, to look at him the way that he had when they had been in the Fairchild’s laboratory. Instead, Matthew had opened his liquor loosened mouth and spewed hate and anger all over him. The way Thomas had looked at him had popped the bubble he had held in his hands. How could he have hope of love from the man who looked at him as if he were poison?  
Alastair choked on a sob, not daring to let it pass his lips.

He couldn’t remember when he had started to make the wrong decisions, but he knew that somewhere along the way he had set himself on the path that had led himself to this moment. Heartbroken inside his family’s carriage while his little sister’s engagement party was happening in the building he had just fled from. Not to mention his drunken, manslaughterer of a father was coming home soon. At first, Alastair had been worried because he had felt he was finally getting his footing in London, even with his relationship with Charles falling apart. Clearly, he had been wrong, so what difference would it make to him now if he had to fall back into old habits of cleaning up his father’s messes.  
He supposed, in retrospect, the first wrong choice he made was choosing Charles. He chose to laugh at others, instead of being laughed at. He did so with noble intention; to protect his family and the name of Carstairs even though it was evident Elias would taint it himself. But he couldn’t lie, not to himself anymore, he had chosen to be horrible because it was what Charles had chosen. His boyhood crush on an arrogant, ambitious and driven boy had turned Alastair into a monster. Into someone he didn’t recognise, and someone he didn’t like. He’d told himself for so long that he didn’t have any choices, he had to do what he did- treat the Merry Thieves like dirt and push Cordelia away. He had convinced himself there was no other option. But the look on Thomas’s face had unravelled that conviction, his beliefs. There had always been choices, he had just made the wrong ones and he didn’t know now if there was any way for him to go back.

Is this who I am now? He wondered to himself, wiping silently falling tears from his face.  
Who did I use to be? The fact that he couldn’t really answer that question made him feel worse and a fresh wave of tears flooded down his cheeks.  
He wasn’t too worried though, he knew that if anyone was walking past, they wouldn’t hear him crying. He had learnt from a very young age to cry quietly, virtually silently. He had been raised as a warrior, by a drunkard of a man who grilled it into Alastair that men don’t cry. No, Papa, we just drown our sorrows in liquor he would want to say, but never did. Maybe he should have, at least when he was old enough to fight him back. The only reason he hadn’t was because it would mean explaining to his mother and his sister what had happened. It would mean stripping Cordelia of her childhood, and he knew the look of despair it would put on his mother’s face and he couldn’t do that to them. So, he swallowed his words and his sobs, and let tears fall quietly in the dead of night in his room.  
It had been an asset to him at the Academy though, when he shared a room with Charles, to be able to cry silently.

Alastair wiped the last of his tears away and lay sideways in the carriage, putting his feet on the bench and his arms crossed under his head. He was tired, and he just wanted to sleep or go home, but he knew he couldn’t leave his little sister’s engagement party- it was bad enough that he was in the carriage outside. He could see a little square of the night sky through the window and nothing else, and if he wanted to, he could probably imagine he was anywhere else except there.  
Alastair used to hate night-time; he had been scared of the dark when he was really small. It wasn’t until he had been given a witchlight when he was nine that his fear of the dark had had quelled. He had since given that witchlight runestone to Cordelia, quietly hoping that it would help his headstrong younger sister fight her own monsters. Unfortunately, the year after he had been given his witchlight, his dad’s reliance on liquor grew into a problem. It was at ten that this new battle with night came, and he had started to rescue his dad from gin hovels and holes in the ground. Dragging his full grown, Shadowhunter father through the night and in through the back door, depositing him quietly in his parents’ room.  
The only time he had ever started to like night time was because of Charles, when the two of them started to spend time together at the Academy. The nights that they had stayed up talking, at first in their respective beds with a light on and talking about all things trivial. Alastair had liked the way he got so passionate when he talked about politics and his ambitions in life, his cheeks going as red as his hair.  
Then the lights had gone off and they stayed on their own beds, making it easier to talk about the deeper things in life when you couldn’t see the words reach the other person. And then they had met in the middle of the room, the two of them standing shoulder to shoulder at the window, facing the grounds of the Academy and not each other, whispering their conversations. Alastair’s hands had shaken every night for weeks as they stood together talking. When Charles had taken his hand in his, he had said it was to stop them shaking.

Alastair covered his eyes in the crook of his elbow, waiting for the pinch in his heart to release. Still, even though thinking of that first year with Charles hurt, his instincts didn’t want him to run after him and beg for him back. What he really wanted to do was find Thomas. He wanted to tell him he was sorry, and he wanted to explain. He wanted to take Thomas’s hand, he wanted to stare at the stars with him and find out his secrets and ambitions.  
Maybe Alastair was no longer scared of the dark, but being alone in it was still an unpleasant feeling.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr: @tsc-living or @andrew-is-foxy <3


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